Trump Says He Could Pull A Xi

Looking for something that will make Monday even worse? Okay, how’s this? Over the weekend, Donald Trump seems to have expressed admiration for China’s newly anointed dictator, Xi Jinping, and his recent more or less total consolidation of power. In particular, he said, “Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”

According to CNN, the remarks came in a speech to GOP donors in Florida on Saturday. The event was supposed to be “closed-door,” but somehow the network got a recording of Trump’s speech. The speech was said to be jocular, and maybe his remarks about a dictatorship were supposed to be a joke as well. Unfortunately, given Trump’s well-documented authoritarian tendencies, and his admiration for autocrats like Xi and Putin, you have to take him at face value.

We can only hope that his reign of error will end before American democracy does.